Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1028
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Edi Gathegi works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Edi Gathegi appears in 17 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Edi. Superman is the clearest case: a film rated 7.5 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, science fiction, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with James Gunn, Dee Rees, Cameron Crowe and others, Edi Gathegi helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Superman (2025) as Mr. Terrific · X-Men: First Class (2011) as Darwin / Armando Muñoz · Gone Baby Gone (2007) as Cheese
Career snapshot
Ranked #1028 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
17
2006–2027
Career length
21 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
Superman
Average Nutevio score
6.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Superman
Most frequent director
James Gunn
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With James Gunn
Most common genre
Drama
11 titles
Average runtime
1h 42m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.3
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2000s
6.5 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. The Twilight Saga: New Moon, My Bloody Valentine, Twilight — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.5
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.4
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Twilight Saga: New Moon, My Bloody Valentine, Twilight.
Most productive era
2020s
7 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.74 films | 5.93 films | 5.84 films |
| Action | 6.82 films | 7.31 film | 3.82 films |
| Thriller | 6.43 films | 5.91 film | 5.62 films |
| Comedy | — | 5.51 film | — |
| Crime | 6.93 films | 5.91 film | — |
| Romance | 6.32 films | 5.51 film | — |
| Horror | 5.61 film | — | 6.31 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2006Crank
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Haitian Cabbie.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2025Superman
7.5 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2027Man of Tomorrow
The current state of the argument, as Mr. Terrific.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
17 of 17 films
as Mr. Terrific
Directed by James Gunn
as Darwin / Armando Muñoz
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
as Cheese
Directed by Ben Affleck
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Mr. Terrific
Superman (2025)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Mr. Terrific gives Edi Gathegi a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Darwin / Armando Muñoz
X-Men: First Class (2011)
Performance score7.2
X-Men: First Class asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Darwin / Armando Muñoz is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Cheese
Gone Baby Gone (2007)
Performance score7.2
Gone Baby Gone asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Cheese is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Harlow Reid
Caged (2021)
Performance score7.0
Caged asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Harlow Reid is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Mr. Terrific
Start here. Superman is the clearest statement of what Edi Gathegi does — accessible, 130 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Edi at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Gone Baby Gone (2007)
A deliberate change of key after Superman — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
X-Men: First Class (2011)
A deliberate change of key after Gone Baby Gone — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Pimp (2018)
A deliberate change of key after X-Men: First Class — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Caged (2021)
Same director as Pimp, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
James Gunn
Director
2 films together
Notably Superman
Brian Taylor
Director
1 film together
Notably Crank
James Wan
Director
1 film together
Notably Death Sentence
Ben Affleck
Director
1 film together
Notably Gone Baby Gone
Catherine Hardwicke
Director
1 film together
Notably Twilight
Patrick Lussier
Director
1 film together
Notably My Bloody Valentine
Chris Weitz
Director
1 film together
Notably The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Matthew Vaughn
Director
1 film together
Notably X-Men: First Class
Jackie Earle Haley
Director
1 film together
Notably Criminal Activities
Cameron Crowe
Director
1 film together
Notably Aloha
Dee Rees
Director
1 film together
Notably The Last Thing He Wanted
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
James Gunn
Director
2 films together · 3.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
SupermanMatthew Vaughn
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
X-Men: First ClassBen Affleck
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gone Baby GoneJames Wan
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Death SentenceBrian Taylor
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CrankCatherine Hardwicke
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TwilightChris Weitz
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Twilight Saga: New MoonJackie Earle Haley
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Criminal ActivitiesPatrick Lussier
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
My Bloody ValentineCameron Crowe
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AlohaDee Rees
Director
1 film together · 4.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Last Thing He WantedSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Superman
as Mr. Terrific
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Twilight
as Laurent
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Superman
as Mr. Terrific
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
X-Men: First Class
as Darwin / Armando Muñoz
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Superman
as Mr. Terrific
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Edi Gathegi has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
21 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Drama Legend
Awarded
11 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Gone Baby Gone
as Cheese
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Gone Baby Gone
as Cheese
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
as Laurent
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Gone Baby Gone
as Cheese
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Superman
as Mr. Terrific
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
X-Men: First Class
as Darwin / Armando Muñoz
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Aloha
as Lt. Colonel Curtis
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
as Laurent
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
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Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Christian Bale
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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